Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, all as well as executive job search coaching and life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us and click the relevant tab on the top of the page.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

EP 987 A few things to do to upgrade your resume ESPECIALLY if you are an experienced person.

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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, all as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us and click the relevant tab on the top of the page.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7pL0pIISEA[/svp]With credit to Jenny Foss of TheMuse.com for coining this phrase, I think people make this mistake, way too often and cost themselves opportunities.

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Today, I want to talk with you about your resume. There are a lot of people I know to create these beautiful documents and hire people who do great work for them. Then, they send the same resume out over and over again, blaming the resume for the problem. The resume is the problem, but. The resume is not the cause of the problem.

I want to give Jenny Foss at TheMuse.com credit for this title. She used the article that she did called, “Six Job Search Tips That Are So Basic That People Forget Them.” It is a good article. And, she is right in saying that it is basic stuff.

The basic stuff I want to remind you about is (this was one of her headings) your resume is not a tattoo.

What Do I Mean, “Your Resume Is Not a Tattoo?”

It is not something that is in ink that can never be changed (by the way, you can change a tattoo, but that’s a different conversation). We tend to think of a resume as being a document — period. The same is true of your LinkedIn profile, too. But there are times to change a resume because you want to emphasize one component of your experience or another. This will be true of your LinkedIn profile, too, if you want to draw in certain types of work.

Don’t just treated it as A DOCUMENT. If anything, what you should be doing is uploading this enormous one onto job boards and, in the more recent years, emphasize things that you have done into greater length

and minimize the older work. After all, how interested are you going to be in doing work that you did in the Stone Ages? You want to be doing work like your more current work.

Focusing on the current stuff. Make it very long and detailed. Uploaded it to a job board. Then, when you are submitting a resume for a job, when you are a hunter applying for positions or networking with individuals, you want to tailor your resume to what that firm or hiring manager is looking for. Turn your resume into a living breathing document, rather than having it become a “one-size-fits-all” document – – because one size doesn’t fit all in resumes.

You may have heard me say many times that, like the broken watch that is right twice a day, you will get some interviews from that one resume but miss out on far more. That’s because you know what you’ve done and your resume doesn’t say clearly enough for anyone else to know it.

After all, the reader doesn’t know you and if you have done X for that firm, you have probably done Y too, unless you tell them, unless you put it in your resume. Unless they can find that doing keyword searching in your resume or on your LinkedIn profile, they are not going to believe you have that experience.

Make the fit obvious. Adapt your resume to particular needsand then send it out.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you?

You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter encourages you to not be lazy and to spell and grammar check your résumé.

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I want to talk with you today about not making some of the common mistakes I see in resumes. Here is what I see time and again.

People don’t use the spellchecker with the result being that they describe themselves as “mangers” instead of “managers.” They are the “liason,” instead of the “liaison” for their firm or department. They “lead,” when they should have said “led.” And then there is my personal favorite one. They “asses,” instead of “assess.”

From a grammar perspective, people make a lot of mistakes as well. They use, “your,” instead of, “you’re.”

My point in all of this is not to be obnoxious but to point out that every time that you make a mistake in your resume, there are hairs on people’s next that bristle. You’re trying to make a good impression on someone. They start to asked themselves, “What’s going to happen when this person comes on board and you’re not trying to make a good impression. Where the screw ups going to occur?”

I want to encourage you to use Microsoft Word’s spellchecker and grammar checker. Spellchecker is perfect; grammar checker sometimes depends on the context.

When all is said and done, you want to make sure that the resume that you submit comes across perfectly. And that there are no grammar mistakes. Sometimes you have to make a visual examination of the resume because, in some of the examples that I gave, there were no spelling mistakes. Your usage mistakes as in the example that I gave of, “mangers,” versus “managers.”Manger would probably go through because it’s spelled correctly; managers the word that you intend to use.

So be conscious and you make a visual scan of your resume to make sure that no mistakes go through because certain words are spelled correctly but are being used incorrectly. Definitely, run the grammar checker. There are times that you may use a bullet point, for example, that isn’t the full sentence. Thus, you want to visually check the language to make sure that everything is accurate. This way you will make a great first impression by comparison to the lazy people who don’t do this.

I have to say lazy because what’s the big deal! You are running a spellchecker and a grammar checker. Is this so difficult to do?

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

let’s talk about functional resumes. I am not a fan of functional resumes. It is the problem with functional resumes – – they suggest that you’re hiding something. They suggest that the relevant experience that’s causing you to apply for this role is old. They’re suggesting that you are hiding large gaps in your employment history. Thus, even if you have the relevant experience, I’m not going to call you. At best, I’m going to send you an email that says, “Please send me a chronological resume.”

Why is that? Time is precious and you are obviously trying to hide something. You are obviously trying to hide gaps or that the information was old. Why else would you send a functional resume? Because you did this work last week? Of course, not. The fact remains that people use functional resumes regardless.

The only time a functional resume makes sense is if you are changing careers and your resume leads off with training that you have had that is relevant to your new role. Then, I can see functional resumes working.

Beyond that, all you doing is obscuring certain information that we need to know anyway and, if you think employers are any different, you’re kidding yourself. They aren’t. If anything, they won’t even stop and ask. They’re just going to hit the delete key.

I was involved with the CFO search not too long ago and received a lot of functional resumes for the search. I respond back with an email to those that demonstrate vaguely relevant experience and ask for chronological resume. Every single time, the relevant experience has been years old and the relevant to my client because what you been doing most recently is most pertinent to what matters to them. If you been away from the CFO function for a number of years because you can running a business and now it’s going out of business and now you have to go back to a CFO role, they aren’t interested in interviewing you or bring you on board.

Let me simply say “Ditch the functional resume!” You are not kidding anyone. All that you’re doing is wasting your time and other people’s time. Just don’t bother.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Jeff Altman , The Big Game Hunter explains how to edit an overly long résumé.

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Today, let’s talk about pruning their resume that is ridiculously long. I know in some fields and some academic settings, it seems essential to have a 10 page resume. In industry, that isn’t the case. You want to get your resume to two or 2 1/2 pages in length. Why? Because no one really cares about what you did of the Stone Ages except to see if you had a career progression.

Here’s what you need to do.

Look at the most recent 10 years. That is the area to emphasize. Anything before that you can summarize by saying, “Prior experience was as a (fill in the blank) and (list two or three firms) between “list the dates). So what you’re doing is indicating what you did prior to 10 years ago with a quick summary.

What if your resume is three or four pages and that’s just the past 10 years? Let me ask you a friend question. Will anyone care what you did nine years ago? Yes, you did it but will this relate to the kind of position that you are going for now? Is there any experience for any skill needed from 10 years ago that is pivotal for what you are going for today? Probably not. If there is, you have to include it and risk going to along resume. However, I must in all candor say that, in most fields, it’s completely irrelevant to the kind of position you’re going for today and your ego is getting in the way.

You have to go in with a critical eye and ask yourself, “This is the kind of job them going for. What’s the background of people that they are looking for? Are the keywords going to pop up for what I did 10 years ago and not call me anyway or is this relevant to what I’m doing now?” If it’s irrelevant, get rid of it or minimize. You can do much shorter descriptions of your work or from anything in your past then what you demonstrate today.

When most firms evaluate someone to determine whether they will interview them are looking at just the past few years. The filler is the old stuff and, if you look at their behavior, they are not reading a resume. They are reading screenshots on a computer screen. It is rare when they print out a resume to read it. How many page downs do you think they do? Not a lot.

The most important work is the past few years. As you get past that it becomes progressively less relevant to them. Take a hatchet to it. Cut it down. You have to do it. Not doing it will only hurt you in the end.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains how to discuss your performance metrics in your resume for greatest effect.

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I want to talk with you about framing metrics in your resume in ways that are very powerful.

What to know how powerful it is? Google has written about this formula. Let’s talk about the power of these metrics.

What you do is write about what you’ve done by comparison to the average individual in your organization and how you went about doing it.

For example, in the quote that comes from Google, “Wrote editorials for the New York Times.” That’s one way of saying it but it isn’t particularly effective.

“Had 50 OpEds published by comparison to six by most op-ed writers, as a result of providing deep insight into the following area for three years.”

What they are doing is showing what they did in comparison to the average and then how they went about doing it.

So, if you’re administrative assistant,, you might talk about call averages or support effectiveness, or supporting X number of people or output that you have by comparison to others. If you are a programmer, he might speak in terms of code. If you’re an architect… You get the idea.

The idea is to compare yourself to the average and how you went about doing it. It’s a powerful metrics and method even Google recognizes and looks at when they are evaluating people.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

You know you have to proofread your resume. What is the best way? In this video, Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses the best way to proofread your resume.

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I want to give you some advice about proofreading your resume. Everyone thinks their resume has no spelling or grammar mistakes, no punctuation errors, no misused words. I know that’s true because they would be sending their resume to me if they believe they had any of these mistakes in them.

But I read so many resumes that have mistakes in them – – words that are incorrectly used like “there” and “their.” I know some people can catch the difference but sometimes software jumps the word or letter and no one notices and he gets through.

Here’s my advice for proofreading; I know it’s a lot of quirky but I know it is effective.

I want you to read your resume from the end to the beginning. Start with the last sentence. We did. Is it correct. Is it correct grammatically correct. Is the spelling correct. Good. Go to the next sentence above.

Start of the end and work your way up to the beginning.

I suggest this for a few reasons. The first is that is the exact opposite of what you would expect to you will see things that you wouldn’t otherwise notice. You’ll see things freshly, instead of in the way that was constructed.

Habit says that we tend to skim when we see things in a familiar way. This is not a familiar way of doing things.

The third reason is because I see more errors at the end of the resume that I do at the beginning. It seems that the later you get into the job history, the more likely it is that you make a mistake because you start rushing a bit.

So, start at the end and work your way out. Last sentence to first sentence, look at every sentence of your resume. Make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors. Make sure there are no misused terms. Look for specific words that might be in your resume that, if misspelled would also be correct.

Let me give you an example using old technology. Often, the term, “Novell” (that’s an IT term) would be misspelled as “novel.” Maybe someone’s keyboard stuck and only one L came out. Whatever the reason was, that was a common misspelling. Spellchecking software wouldn’t recognize it because the word “novel”is a correctly spelt word.

Look for terms like that they might exist in your resume, that if misspelled, might get through the spellchecker (for you accountants, think of the word gap and GAAP).

If you follow this advice your resume won’t have those dumb errors that cause people like me and hiring managers to go, “Huh? What was she thinking?” Or, “what was he thinking?”

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter encourages you to stop using superlatives to describe yourself in your resume and/or LinkedIn profile.

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I want to talk with you today about a certain peeve I have about resumes. This extends to LinkedIn profiles as well, but, I was reminded of it when I was interviewing someone for Job Search Radio last week who laid it out so beautifully.

When you read a resume or LinkedIn profile and the person describes themselves with superlatives of any kind (it doesn’t matter if there is one or 15; they are people who describe themselves with 15), when you describe yourself as a “visionary leader” with “extraordinary capabilities to enhance leadership ideas,”… No one believes you!

You just show yourself to be a fool. If anything, minimize your terms; being a minimalist when describing yourself is far more effective than these terms that are thought of as being BS. Why use the fluff when they do nothing to enhance the impression you give in people’s minds about you and instead caused them to think worse of you?

One of you done that was so visionary anyway? Let’s get practical about this. You’re going to be interviewed and they’re going to ask you, “What have you done this so visionary?”

What’s your answer? Nothing. You have nothing that is visionary in your portfolio. It was all BS, they knew it and called you on it.

So, cut the crap and get down to the brass tacks. Tell people what you know and what you’ve done. What you’ve succeeded in and how much money you help your firm make or save. Get the metrics in there (remember, if you work for a public company, you need to be careful with sharing some of that information to avoid revealing something proprietary or confidential).

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter points out how executives need to be careful when discussing metrics on the resume and in an interview.

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I picked up a great job search tip from Perry Newman (www.perrynewman.com) when I interviewed him for Job Search Radio recently.

Perry pointed at something that I’d forgotten and that I had not been emphasizing when speaking with people– if you’re a veteran professional, if you are an executive or at a C level for an organization, you have to be careful with the metrics that you reveal if you work for a public corporation.

If you provide real numbers, sometimes those metrics are way too revealing you are disclosing information that may not be public yet.

However, if you speak in terms of percentages instead of real numbers, they are not at risk of an employer looking at you and thinking, “Gee, that was confidential information I was just told.”

That information might give them a competitive advantage to your firm and reveal too much about your current employer and cause them to have an advantage in certain negotiations and in certain situations.

Again, for use in executive, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your current organization. You cannot cross that line. Firms will listen to you and wonder whether you will do that to them, too. You don’t ever want to be in those circumstances.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.